Rushdie and Atwood join calls to restore citizenship to critic of Modi

More than 250 authors urge India’s prime minister to reinstate overseas citizenship of British journalist Aatish Taseer

Salman Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk and Margaret Atwood are among more than 250 authors calling on India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, to review the decision to strip British Indian writer Aatish Taseer of his Indian citizenship, saying that the move “flies in the face of India’s traditions of free and open debate”.

Taseer, who was born in the UK but grew up in India, is a novelist, memoirist and journalist. In May, he wrote a cover story for Time magazine under the headline “India’s divider in chief”, which was highly critical of Modi’s government. Last week, Taseer was stripped of his overseas citizenship of India (OCI) status, meaning he may be blacklisted and thus never able to return to the country, according to the free-speech organisation PEN.

The boy who once sold tea at a railway station has become the most influential Indian leader in generations, winning a landslide in the 2019 elections. Or so goes the story that has become the core of Narendra Modi’s extraordinary appeal.

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